Women over 60: When “security” costs your soul

What we trade away when we worship stability — and how to reclaim trust in ourselves.

Notice anything odd about the little church in the woods?

We’ve been conditioned to worship stability — 40-year jobs, paid-off mortgages, risk-averse choices — as if they were the ultimate markers of success. But too often, those things serve the system more than the soul.

I only bought property twice in my adult life. Both times, it felt uneasy to me, like I was stepping onto a conveyor belt I never wanted to ride. The realtors, of course, had done a Class-A job of brainwashing my generation: home ownership was the American Dream. Question it, and you’re a fool.

And yes — I was called a fool.

But the chairman of the board at my husband’s church just happened to also be the lead real estate broker in town. Convenient, right? He assured us he’d find the perfect little starter home that “wouldn’t break the bank.” (Well, maybe just our piggy bank.)

It was 1978 or ’79. Interest rates were sky-high. I could feel the weight of it all pressing down, but no one listened. After all, the chairman said this was what we must do, so we did it.

That’s about when the cracks in the marriage began to show. The stress of managing that purchase gnawed at us. I kept waiting for the “happily ever after, American Dream” moment to arrive — but it never showed its face.

Why?

Because we were sold a lie.

We must be wary of anyone trying to sell us happiness, especially when it comes pre-packaged with debt, stress, and someone else’s definition of success. The truth is, happiness grows out of one thing only: our relationship with our creative energy, with our soul.

Imagine if that same church board chairman had come to us and said, “We want to help you nurture your relationship with your soul. Don’t worry about the financials or the house. Instead, we’ll send you on retreats twice a year so you can build stronger connections to yourselves and each other — and bring that vitality back to our congregation.”

Can you imagine how differently that story might have played out?

Instead, we got the big push into a house we weren’t ready for, and the ensuing stress pulled us apart. I realize now it wasn’t the house that cost us so much, it was the slow erosion of my own aliveness under the weight of stability I never asked for.

So why weren’t we encouraged to lean on soul-stability, the kind that makes life rich no matter where you live? Why wasn’t that celebrated from the pulpit instead of mortgages and material markers?

Maybe it’s because soul-stability can’t be monetized, packaged, or taxed. It doesn’t line anyone’s pockets or keep the system humming along. Real stability — the kind that grows from creativity, curiosity, and trust in yourself — doesn’t serve institutions. It serves the human/ego spirit. And that’s precisely why it was left out of the story we were sold.

If I could go back, I’d lead the charge myself — to challenge the narrative that stability in things equals success. Because that kind of false stability is a thief.

It chips away at curiosity. It steals possibility. It replaces wonder and discovery with mortgages, credit card debt, and the endless treadmill of “keeping up with the Joneses.”

All in the name of a dream that was never ours to begin with.

And just like you, I can’t go back in time. But what I can do — what we all can do — is recognize the fallacy of making choices based only on minimizing risk.

Now is the time to practice something far more radical: trusting yourself.

Because when you build that self-trust, you no longer have to tiptoe around risk. You can try something different, break through the invisible box where you once unpacked the dreams of your youth, and step forward with certainty.

A certainty rooted so deep in your soul that risk simply has no place at the table.

We were taught to believe that stability was safety, that mortgages and paychecks and a tidy little life meant we’d “made it.” But what if the real safety lies in the opposite — in knowing yourself so deeply that you trust your ability to rise, no matter what happens? That kind of stability doesn’t live in a house or a bank account. It lives in you.

I’ve created a short PDF called Trust in Yourself — a soul-anchoring guide to remind you that your best safety net is always you. Send me a message using the button below, and I’ll send it straight to you

Tomorrow, in Part 3: What Would Life Look Like If Soul Came First?, I’ll take this conversation one step further — into the wild, liberating possibility of shaping a life around your soul instead of society’s scripts.

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